Under Pressure pt.1

It is that time of the year again....exam time. The time that any student dreads. Everyone, from little children in Yr. 4 all the way up to University is busy studying furiously and waiting for it all to be over... Hopefully for students all over the island, by the time this is oublished, it will be all over for them.

As a parent, and a teacher myself, and obviously as one-time student, it makes you wonder...

Why do we have so many exams in our educational system?? Children as young as seven are sitting for exams in at least five subjects, twice a year.. Comparisons are odious, but seeing that I am currently living in the UK with two children in primary school, maybe they cannot be helped.....

In all of their primary years, UK students experience exams twice, at the end of yr.2 (English and Math) and at the end of yr.6 (English, Math and Science). Why is it absolutely necessary that Maltese children have at least double that, each year? Why not have a system of continuous assessment that lasts throughout the whole school year? Rather than an one or two-hour exam with so much riding on it? When the actual day of the exam may simply be a bad day?

How relevant are all the subjects that students have to study? What practical use is it to an eight-year-old to learn stuff like the finer points of the compass? How many of us ever use all the extraneous stuff we learned at school in our daily lives? Stuff we very probably hated too? Sometimes, you can barely find a practical use for the stuff you loved...

Even the whole concept of 'studying for exams' is suspect... If exams are in core subjects where the main focus is on concepts rather than on facts to be memorised, there should be no need to study..once you understand a concept you only need a little practice to consolidate it, and as a test approaches you need only revise.

Studying for exams is the symptom of an educational system that is still tied to paper and pencil, to sitting at a desk, a system based on book learning, without giving any importance to other ways of learning. A  system based on cramming, on stuffing our students full of knowledge without leaving space for much else.

Teachers are under enormous pressure to deliver a too-vast syllabus within a set time-frame.. Teachers are human too, and there is only so much you can do. In addition to the pressure with the syllabus, teachers also have  vast amounts of paperwork (which parents never see). All this is detracting from what teaching should be about...helping each student achieve his/her potential.

Within families, tensions rise, as adults become more short-tempered and snappy, and children are overwhelmed by the pressure. 

These days school holidays are hardly holidays anymore.... My niece is 8; she got a Holiday Extra Work Pack over summer (ending yr.3); she got a Revision Pack of about 20 double-sided sheets for each core subject (Maths, English, Maltese) over Christmas. In addition, she started exams last Friday, meaning she spent the Carnival holidays revising/studying... My sister took a couple of days off from work,and instead of spending decent quality-time with her daughter over the 'holidays', it ended up being a stressful time for both of them.

Pressure pressure pressure.

In spite of this, many of us parents grit our teeth and plough ahead with studying with their children. To be fair, this is the only strategy that we learned from our own student years.

But is it not short-sighted to think that our strategies are automatically applicable to our kids?

Children today are different from what we were at their age. Nowadays, a child can find whatever s/he is interested in with a few taps on a touch screen. Their childhood is fundamentally different from ours. The world we inhabit and its messages have changed too... Shouldn't an education system be ever-evolving and take that into consideration too..??? 

The concept of expending time and energy on something that does not interest us has become obsolete in today's world. As adults we're told, "If it doesn't interest you; move on". Why should it be any different for children? 

So, maybe we as parents, educators and policy makers should question the wisdom of a system that still applies the logic of yesterday to the world of today. Who knows, it might be the solution to easing the pressure?

Since I moved abroad, I've had frinds tell mee wistfully 'Hekk sew (That's nice!)' when we talk about our different educational experiences as parents.... Is it not  ludicrous that moving becomes a "solution" to the pressure in our educational system?

Of lettuce and hot air....

Emily Slater has autism. Like most people on the autistic spectrum, she has significant difficulty in learning more than one language. And this shows in her exam results…while she struggles with her Maltese O-Level, she has satisfied all the other entry criteria. Last week, Emily took her case to the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Obviously, this made the news, and fuelled plenty of facebook debate.

There were all sorts of comments and opinions, ranging from the insensitive to the plain stupid….

Let’s get a few facts straight.

Malta is a bilingual country. Both Maltese and English are the official languages of the country. Having said that, English is the lingua franca in many countries of the world. Our bilingualism comes as much from financial expediency as from our time under British rule.

The Maltese language with its very specific niche is what is truly our own. I live close to one of the world’s most multi-cultural cities. Any time, any day you can hear different languages, different accents ..and yet, I repeatedly get asked, often by strangers, to describe Maltese as ‘it is different from any other language’.

The fact that as a nation, many of us fail to perceive the uniqueness of our language is a great shame. So yes, I do understand the initial indignation expressed by some.

But….

This is not a story about national pride or about our language. A sarcastic round of applause to the media who depicted it as such!!

This is not about doing away with the Maltese language. This is about a young person with a learning issue, and about working around that issue for her to achieve her potential. This is about inclusion.

It is about questioning the established patterns, things which have been that way forever..

We are a bilingual country, so why can’t we have either one language or the other in cases like this?

If University feels strongly about keeping Maltese as an entry requirement (as it should, after all) why is it that foreign students applying to study there are excused from knowing Maltese? Anyone who’s ever applied to study at a university in a foreign country knows that prospective students are asked to demonstrate competence in the language of the country. The books in university libraries abroad are usually in the local language.

Why do our students not have suitable textbooks in Maltese? Why does English persist as the language of Physics, Chemistry, ICT, Psychology?  Indeed, this is the case with most subjects from senior school right up to university level.

I am all for cherishing our unique language… but sadly, there is no logic to having Maltese as a university entry requirement. Beyond maybe an obvious and rather ham-fisted attempt to give some dignity to something that should be a matter of national pride, but is often treated like a poor relation.

This is a story about inclusion (and in this case, the lack thereof). And sadly, this is not limited to this particular case. How is a student with ADHD supposed to succeed in an education system that is based on cramming, long hours of studying and rote-learning? Make no mistake, for all its wheelchair ramps and notices in Braille, university is far from inclusive.

Invisible disabilities are still disabilities, and when people with such conditions work hard to overcome obstacles, they should not be punished by a system whose inclusiveness only extends to visible disabilities.

Emily has been to Strasbourg to protest over what she justly perceives as an infringement of her right to continuing her education. Hopefully, things will move in the right direction now and adequate concessions will be made, not just for her, but also for future prospective students with invisible disabilities.

As to what will happen after she does graduate is a story for another day…..

The Dress...or... How Shallow Can you Get??

So, yes ... our Head of State wore a hideous dress. There....i said it.
Does that make it ok to bash her? No...
Anyone who has the slightest chip on his shoulder came crawling out of the woodwork last night. To engage in one of the most puerile displays of playground bullying ever.
And yes, comments comparing her to a figolla or Fiona from Shrek ARE bashing her.

Apart from the shallowness of it all...

1. Funny how some of the people getting their knickers in a twist over the green concoction were petitioning for CHOGM to be cancelled, you know, just in case ISIS came over to murder some dignitaries and killed one of our own security in the process (the dignitaries. ..who cares about 'em; because of them our security wo/men's lives will be at risk..)

2. All this bile directed towards Madam President over a dress.
The woman clearly was wrongly styled.. when she was still an MP she dressed smartly...evidently, the person responsible for styling the President is not doing the job at all.
If anything, it is the stylist who deserves to be tarred and feathered.

3. Ultimately Madam President is a person too, and while I'm sure she is immune to this kind of crap, that doesn't make it right.

4. Why all the fuss? Because she's a woman? Because she's meant to look like some slyph like model?
Yes, she's meant to look good because she represents the country, but some of the comments last night questioned the sanity of appointing a woman president. I wonder whether all those women who gleefully jumped on the hate-bandwagon realised that they were essentially, at least indirectly, backing people who think that a woman should never have been made President.

5. Why all the praise heaped on the Royals? Why the looking up to them like they're some kind of sartorial demi-gods? Or the wistful "but they can afford it"..?
For starters, I'm pretty sure the infamous dress cost a small fortune..these horrible things usually do. Second, yes, the Royals are stylish but they were born into this not thrust into it, and in their long and illustrious lives, I'm pretty sure there have been a few faux pas along the way.

6. Is it testament to our innate bitchiness that while the green dress memes went viral in a matter of seconds, only very few people shared the photo of the dress choice for the evening?

7. Madam President may not be a fashionista but the role of a Head of State is not merely to be a fashion plate. There are other aspects to it which she fulfills admirably..
And yet, we bitch and tear her to shreds over a dress. 

Nice to see that our priorities are still straight!

P.S. (while I'm at it..)
Note to whoever put out the posts praising police/army officers to high heaven for simply doing their job in the "cold and bad weather"... ever heard the phrase "all included in the pay packet"?? Should a bit of wind and rain grind everything to a halt... are we still living in caves, ffs?
Do you even have any idea how stupid and parochial all the moaning about the weather sounds?
This is Malta, ffs...not the outer reaches of Siberia!

And no,I will not indulge in the usual "Nisthi nghid li jien Maltija" bullshit rhetoric that inevitably comes up in situations like this. Anyway, why the HELL should I be ashamed I'm Maltese?? If anything, I'm ashamed to say that certain idiots are Maltese....And that includes the incompetents, the totally ignorant and slipshod 'u iva,mhux xorta' brigade, and the hate-mongers.

STRUCK BY LIGHTNING

This poem is dedicated to a very special person,someone who said "I will be there" and who has been there consistently, not just for me but for my whole family.

Sometimes people come into your life,

and the connection is instant,

Like a lightning bolt.

Is it stupid to feel connected to someone

you've never actually met,in the flesh?

Is it silly to feel like you sooooo know that person?

Trust....

Takes so long to come usually.

But this time somehow you KNOW.

You feel it in every fibre of our being

...this person is safe, this person I can trust

And you do. You trust and hope 

that somehow they feel the same.

It is such a gift, to feel safe.....

in a world that has whacked you so many times....

I know..we all feel our troubles the most.

but truly,

feeling safe,

feeling accepted, 

feeling loved, 

for who I am,

with all my sweetness,

and pushiness,

unconditionally...

...such a sweet gift

...such a feeling of 'being okay'

I want to give that gift

I want you to know

that safety,

that acceptance,

that unconditional love,

that feeling of coming home.

HOME

We had a typical British summer here.. wet and cool. And like any other Maltese person who knows the heat, the rih isfel, the scorching sun and the dazzling turquoise seas..I missed Malta and our long, hot summer with a passion.

And I got thinking.... I am living here in the UK because I want to, because I have a choice..I can go back home (or indeed anywhere in the world) anytime. My passport is well-thumbed.. More importantly I have a passport.

I am here out of choice...and I still hanker for home.. I still miss the Malteseness of people. (and I certainly cannot complain of hostility from the locals). 

This post is not intended to be about the refugee crisis. I have written about it in other posts and anyone who follows me know where I stand on the issue, knows that I personally feel it is my DUTY to help. But as the news spotlight has moved on in recent days, and our MEPs and our heads of State are in 'talks', it is all too easy for us to forget that outside of our comfortable existence, there are other realities, other existences that are so far removed from our own experience that we could not even begin to imagine what they must be like. We need to hear about them from the people who have been there, experienced that and if they're lucky, have escaped with a handed-down fake-branded t-shirt.

I found this poem by Warsan Shire earlier this year. I think it explains so many things, if only we are ready to listen to them.

Before little Aylan Kurdi's body washed up on a Bodrum beach, thousands had drowned in this desperate crossing. Yet how many times have we heard that these people cross on a whim? 

I will stop here. 'Home' is food for thought enough.

HOME  (Warsan Shire)

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied

no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough

the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here

Syria refugee/migrant crisis

As the migrant/refugee crisis drags on, and our leaders twiddle their thumbs and squabble over who does what.....these are some reflections of mine.

These are people, families with kids like ours... It breaks my heart to read the comments/posts loaded with hate and indifference. The root of it is fear and just plain old selfishness. These people are just seeking a better life.
It could be us....and if it were us, we'd expect compassion...yet we find it hard to be compassionate towards others.
I'm sick of all the bullshit excuses I've been hearing ad nauseam...there could be ISIS terrorists among them (like, when have ISIS ever left anything to chance?) ....they will take our homes, our jobs, our tax-funded benefits (I wonder whether any of the people spreading these hate posts have ever lived on benefits in a foreign country ....it is humiliating, to say the least.. Who would want to do so on a whim??) .... they are Muslims, they will destroy our churches etc (not all Muslims are radical Muslims...there are millions of Muslims in the world..why do we generalise from the actions of a few thousands???)
It is shameful that some people use news stories, inflate them out of all proportion, and add their own spin to them before passing them off as facts...and all this to fuel their own sick agenda..
And it is even more shameful when people who are meant to be 'good' people allow themselves to be manipulated by these so-called 'news reports' which in reality are nothing more than scurrilous opinion pieces.
It is a disgrace that people do not realise or care that they are being used, when anyone with half a brain knows that you should always check the source of that article you're reading...

I agree that the huge influx of refugees is a massive logistical headache...but many European governments have done nothing to prepare for it. The war in Syria has been going on for more than four years...shouldn't that have warned us that at some point these people would be displaced simply because the situation in their home country is untenable?
Yes, Assad needs to be taken out, this massacre of the Syrian people needs to be stopped in much the same way that ISIS needs to be stopped. But what about the big guns, the ones who have the power to put an end to this, who can make it safe for migrants/refugees to return to their homeland...have they done anything about it???
Even so, their wrong does not make our indifference, selfishness and plain hatred right.

No one (not even "economic migrants") leaves his home country, unless leaving is the only choice left. If you are in any doubt, try moving to another country legally and you will maybe understand better....
Just think before you spew hate ... If you were desperately seeking a better place to raise your children than your war torn home country, if you had crossed the desert on foot, and the sea on a rickety boat just to get to the better countries...and found that you are unwanted, that you are going to have to fight for every single breath you take... How would you feel? Would it hurt? Would your feet bleed when you have to walk thousands of kilometres ??  Would your heart break seeing your son exhausted from all the walking when you are unable to carry him on your back?
I know mine would.

New Mothers Should Let their Husbands do More Housework, says Associate Professor

Clare Kamp Dush is an associate professor in Human Sciences and Sociology at Ohio State University and the mother of four young children.
She recently carried out a study with 182 couples. Both partners in these couples were college-educated and both were in employment. Kamp Dush found that in most childless couples, both partners regularly and equally share the housework. However, this changes once a baby comes into the equation. Fathers not only do less work around the house; they are also less involved in caring for the new child.

Wow!! So let me get this straight. At a time when the mother has been through what is at best, a trying time, and at worst, an absolute bloody nightmare, the father suddenly gets involved less in the house.

And then we wonder why moms get post natal depression!!

The arrival of a baby is traditionally said to turn your life upside down...so upside down it seems that men back away from the chaos that now pervades what was once an oasis of tranquillty.

According to Kamp Dush's study, the majority of the dads were unaware of this shift in the workload, something I'm not sure I believe....but maybe that's because I'm a cynical old cow. Intentional or not, there is no denying that the effect is profound.

Picture this...you have just been through the roughest experience of your life, your life is turned upside down, you have a new tiny being, dependant on you round the clock, your biological everything has gone haywire...and as if all this not enough, your husband just shimmies his way out of what has become your world.. Because let's be honest, a lot of the caring for a new baby revolves around being at home.
As your previously wide world-is-my-oyster view shrinks to the space encompassed by the four walls of the house, the father withdraws. Already during the period of maternity leave, this can be cause for and stress and resentment. When you go back to work, the stress and resentment can only get worse.

Kamp Dush says that the transition to parenthood is "the critical juncture where husband and wife must create new roles", those of parents, as opposed to those of partners in a couple. 
But somehow, even partners who previously practised equal sharing of housework, find themselves unable to keep up this practice once a baby arrives. Is this just another casualty of parenthood, along with late-morning lie-ins and adult daytime TV?

Or is it just that societal dictates are too hard to break?
The other day we took my son to the GP as he was unwell  (turns out he had a tummy bug, which takes longer than usual to get rid of). While we were there the  GP asked my husband about a burn on his forearm. My husband replied that he gotten it while doing the ironing. Ah...the ironing. No more words were said, but the look on the GP's face was one of puzzlement... Why doesn't she do the ironing?
Now, ironing is the only chore my husband does. He works long days,and as a SAHM, I have figured out how to include everything else into my days, along with the housework and with my writing. But ironing is something I hate, and seeing that the bulk of the ironing is made up of his shirts, my husband (wisely, perhaps) takes care of it himself.
Once we'd left the GP's I told my husband about the look.. He said I'm reading too much into it. It's easy to say that when you're a man and doing a fraction of the housework somehow elevates you to sainthood.

The sad thing is these are college-educated people, people who have worked hard for a career they are rightly unwilling to let go. They would probably be the first to argue that traditional models of division of labour are implausible nowadays.
Yet in times of stress and upheaval we tend to seek out the familiar for comfort. Our own parents probably followed traditional man/woman roles, and this is where we feel safe.
My husband and I are both college-educated. In our family, we have tended to buck people's expectations of what a family should be like. We are certainly not conventional,the sort to go with trends. Yet, somehow even we have fallen into the mom>dad ratio, when it comes to housework and childcare.

Feminists will doubtlessly argue that moms need to demand that their husbands put in equal effort in both housework and childcare. Only if we take a stand will we get the respect we deserve.

But really? Doesn't this simply add yet another burden to the ones already on moms' shoulders? 
Let's face it, new moms are often sleep-deprived and exhausted by childcare alone. How many will have the energy to get into an industrial-scale dispute over the housework? A dispute that has lasting results? As opposed to a mere guilt-induced request to "put your feet up, while I do the dishes"..that lasts all of one night?

Kamp Dush concludes that "a husband who does half of all the housework and childcare continues to remain a rare, semi-mythical creature whom no one believes exists". Unless men are socialised into housework/childcare roles right from boyhood, this will not change anytime soon.

Note. The title of this article is quoted from the article which Kamp Dush herself wrote for Newsweek. I thought it is one interesting choice of words, especially "let". Are there any husbands out there falling over themselves to do the housework, who are being prevented from doing so by their Stepford-style wives? In that case, please let me know...I might manage to negotiate a husband-swap.